


Upsetting a perfectly good plan

by Ginny_theQueen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fools in Love, I am a slut for jily, I miss Hogwarts in the 70s, I miss jily more than life, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Proposals, angsty at points but generally happy, he's not even in this but I'm literally him, in which I am Sirius, jilyoctober, slightly fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_theQueen/pseuds/Ginny_theQueen
Summary: Seventh year is coming to a close and our Gryffindors must decide what their lives will be like in a short two months’ time. James and Lily discuss present and future.[This might be a multichapter and I would add more characters, I do have a couple of ideas for more chapters; we'll see how the first one goes, I guess!]





	Upsetting a perfectly good plan

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't published anything in a while, but October 31st is coming up, and I had to write some Jily. Hope you enjoy!

“You should move in with me.”  
The statement comes out of his mouth so randomly that Lily thinks even he looks a bit surprised at the words.  
“Pardon?”  
“We should live together.”  
“And you decided that before or after the girls and I started apartment-hunting?”  
James shakes his head. “Lily, I know that we’re too young, but look at us. People are dying every day. We joined the Order, we’ll never know peace and we’ll never be safe until we’re three feet underground. I’d like to live every day like it could be my last, and I’d like to spend them all with you, however many the gods grant me.”  
“James…” she doesn’t really know what to say. Because her heart wants one thing and her head another. She knows which one she wants to win her internal battle, she just has to figure out how to win his. “Living together won’t do anything against the threats of the war, surely.” She trains her voice to sound annoyed, with a tinge of bitterness even. She hopes he falls for it.  
“Maybe, but I know I want my present and my future to have you in it.”  
She can’t counterargue that or lie that she doesn’t, so she opts not to say anything.  
“I know you and the girls are planning to go live all together somewhere –”  
“We’re getting an apartment in London.”  
“I have an apartment. Several, actually. Even one in London.”  
“That you and the boys will go live in.”  
He takes a deep sigh, and Lily knows he’s doing it to contain his frustration. “Lily, I don’t want to go live with the boys.” His stare is so intense she thinks it will blow a hole in her head. “I mean, I do, but not if the other option is to be with you.”  
She schools her features into calm and she hopes her voice doesn’t tremble when she speaks. “James, we’ll still be together. I know we’re used to sharing the Head dorms, but living in two separate apartments won’t change our relationship, I promise. I love you, you know that.”  
“Why? Just tell me why you don’t want to live with me and I promise I’ll let this go.”  
She’s at a loss for words. “I promised the girls—”  
“It’s not the previous commitment, Lily, you haven’t even started looking. I talked to Marlene after practice and she said you can’t even agree on the neighborhood.”  
“We’ll find something that suits all of us soon. We always have. Mary wants to be near Diagon Alley and Marlene wants to be near the Prophet and Alice and I want to be close to the Ministry but—”  
“We’ll both be going to the Aurors Program. My apartment is conveniently near the Ministry.”  
“If we make it to the Program—”  
“Nonsense, Moody is our supervisor in the bloody Order of the Phoenix, of course he wants us to be trained as Aurors!” he’s almost shouting.  
“If we make it,” Lily repeats calmly but firmly. “I will just Apparate from wherever the girls and I end up.”  
Her excuses aren’t making any sense, she’s just contradicting her previous argument, and she knows James has cracked it. “I’m not asking you to move into Potter manor with my mother and the house elves.”  
“I wouldn’t want to.”  
“Good, ‘cause I don’t want that either. I’m asking you to come live in the town house because it’s exactly where we need it to be, and it comes for free. How exactly are you planning on paying rent with the girls? Thinking of working night shifts at the Cauldron?”  
“What if I am?”  
“Then I guess you’ll have to hand the Order your resignations, because even if you decide to forego sleep, unless you can be in two places at the same time, you won’t be able to go on night missions and patrols while serving Firewhiskey.”  
He’s right and her pathetic excuses won’t stand for much longer. “I…” she starts, not really knowing what to cling to. “I don’t want your money. Or your pity.”  
“My pity? Lily, you know I want this. I’m not asking you to do you a favor. If anything, it’s selfish that I want to be with you at all times, until the very end, but I know it’s what you want too! I don’t want there to be a power dynamic between us. I want you to say yes because you desire to, not because you need to. And I know that you want it because you’re coming up with stupid excuses and not real ones. So what is the problem here?”  
Power dynamic? Does he really think I’m saying no because I’m afraid of what he would do if I were dependent on him? My James.  
“I told you. I don’t want your money. It’s yours. I’m your girlfriend, not a charity case.”  
He doesn’t say anything for a while. Lily thinks it might be a few minutes and she knows she has not shut him up. He’s just thinking of a clever thing to say to win this game they’ve been playing.  
He wets his lips with his tongue before he speaks the next few words. “Then let’s get married. All that is mine becomes yours, problem solved.”  
She is taken aback, but only for a moment. She knew this might be coming, even if it’s absurd. It takes Lily all her will power to answer the way she needs to.  
“Marrying you doesn’t purify my blood status, it only makes you a blood traitor.” She sighs. “It doesn’t avoid the problem, it creates another. It doesn’t make me any less of a mudblood.”  
He’s about to argue but she cuts him off. “I won’t have you become a blood traitor, James, I just won’t put you at risk like that.”  
It doesn’t feel like they are 18. This is a conversation Lily wished they didn’t need to have right now. More than anything, she wished she didn’t feel so trapped.  
Not by him, she thinks guiltily. Never by him.  
He’s smiling bitterly now, and she knows there’s tears shining in his hazel eyes. “There it is. The real reason. You’re on a stupid crusade to try and protect me, aren’t you, Lily? We’ve been over this. You are what I want.”  
“And I am what they want. I will never be pure enough for him, James. I don’t want to taint you too. I know you want to fight, but you can have a long life.” The implications of what she just said are too much for either of them to address. She folds her arms, praying that her tears haven’t left her eyes. “You can’t win this one, James.”  
“Merlin, Lily, this is not a Quidditch match! There is nothing to win. You either want to be with me or you don’t. We’re not two opposite teams; we both win or lose together.” He pauses, calming his breath for a second, and adds in a darker tone: “Or separately, I suppose.”  
Lily jumps up to repair what might soon become unrepairable. “No, James, you know that’s not what I want.”  
She knows the reason why he’s so angry is not her refusal, but because they’ve already been over this. Back in January, after the deaths of Benjy and Finn, she tried to break up with James. She thought he’d be safer if he wasn’t dating her. She went as far as lying to him, telling him she didn’t really want this, but he had seen through her. She had since promised she wouldn’t pull one like that again, but this feels awfully similar, and it hurts just as well.  
So James alters his strategy and hands the Quaffle to her. “Very well then. What is it that you want to do?”  
Sleep. Lily is tired, and the NEWTs are only getting closer. “Can we not make a final decision today? Let me speak to the girls first.”  
His smile is softer now. “Of course. Just know that it won’t help your cause.”  
“What—what do you mean?”  
“Frank is proposing to Alice as we speak. If everything goes according to plan and she accepts, which I have no doubt she will, that upsets your apartment scheme.”  
Lily is taken aback. “Why now?” Why are you both doing this is what she means.  
“Because we panicked! You girls started talking about renting long-term and Frank and I looked at each other and knew we were thinking the same. We don’t have to get married right after school, Lily, but you and I both want it to happen, sometime down the line. Unless we die first.”  
Oh.  
“Mary and Marlene were afraid they’d be left with an apartment too big to pay for themselves in less than a year so they came to talk to us last month.” He almost laughs then. “It was an interesting meeting we had. All serious and business-like. Marlene was even taking notes. They even made us move to our office while you showered. They sat us down and asked what our intentions with you two were. We were honest and said we both were planning on asking you to live together within the end of the year.”  
Lily thinks this situation is even more absurd than it sounded before she knew of her friends’ involvement in all this.  
“You went behind my back.” Her voice is calm but deadly.  
“No, love, we were thinking one step ahead. Lily, you have every right to decide you do not ever want to move in with me or to marry me, but I have every right to ask, and your friends deserve to know. The night you rescued me from Voldemort in February you told me you’d go to the ends of the Earth for me. When I returned from that mission two weekends ago, you told me you never wanted to be separated again. This is how we stay together, Lils.”  
“By gossiping with Mary and Marlene?”  
“We talked to them again this month, and they agree. That’s why you haven’t been able to find a place. They were fighting you on purpose just to stall, waiting for us to do our move.”  
Oh, fuck it. She stops reining in the genuine laughter that’s been bubbling beneath the surface ever since their friends were brought up.  
“What?” James asks, exasperated at how moody she is tonight, clearly needing to be let in on the joke.  
“So you mean to tell me,” she pauses to catch her breath between one fit of laughter and the other, “that you’re proposing to me because Marlene and Mary made you?”  
“What? Merlin and Morgana, no! How can that be what you take away from all this?”  
“It’s hilarious. And here I thought I was going to get a genuine love declaration!” She’s practically in hysterics now, but James looks even more frustrated and red in the face now than when they were fighting.  
“Lily!” he tries to grab her hands. “Lily, this is serious!” He catches her expression and quickly adds, “No, don’t—!”  
Her hands avoid his and go rest on his shoulders. “You’re not Sirius, he’s in the other room.”  
“That’s it. You can rent your own apartment if you make that joke one more time.”  
“But it’s so funny…” she hugs his frame and his strong arms wrap around her middle.  
“Not after seven years of living with him, it’s not.” Lily can practically hear his smile.  
“Says the bloke who’s made up a new stupid nickname for me every day since third year.”  
“My point exactly, change is good.”  
A comfortable silence falls, and Lily doesn’t break it until it feels right.  
“How much do you want to bet Alice didn’t even let Frank finish his speech before she said yes?”  
His head leans even closer so he can whisper in her ear, “Between you and me, he was hoping that would happen. He didn’t exactly have an entire speech planned out.”  
She giggles at that. “That seems like a common thing you Gryffindor boys do when proposing. Act now, think later.”  
He dramatically rolls his eyes, and his hands leave her side to cover his eyes. “For the last time, I hadn’t meant to propose to you, it was Frank’s big day! I was only going to ask you to move in with me. If I had known it would’ve come to this I would’ve brought the damn ring!”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this made you smile. Let me know if you think I should continue!


End file.
